Missouri
Risk-Based Cleanup Tools, Controls and Resources
Some contaminated properties in Missouri cannot be cleaned to pristine conditions. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources allows some to be cleaned to specific levels, such as residential or non-residential, based partly on current and future land use. To protect people from what remains, the property owner and the department, and sometimes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, put tools and controls in place. The department says long-term stewardship makes sure they stay in place until they are no longer needed.
In a Phase I ESA
ASTM E1527-21 asks for state institutional and engineering control records. This page explains the instruments those records describe in Missouri, and the Long-Term Stewardship (LTS) page covers the sites that carry them.
Engineering controls
The department describes engineering controls as physical measures at the site to contain the contamination or limit its spread, such as warning signs, fences, caps and slurry trenches. It says engineering controls may also be used to reduce contamination levels, as extraction systems and treatment systems do. It says they need ongoing evaluation, inspection, monitoring, maintenance and periodic repair to stay effective. Engineering controls for a site are usually in that site's remediation plan.
Institutional controls
The department describes institutional controls as administrative or legal instruments that restrict land use or activities at a site, known as activity and use limitations. It groups them in four categories.
- Enforcement and permit tools. Permits, administrative orders, judgments and consent decrees. The department says most enforcement agreements bind only the signatories, so the property restrictions do not bind later owners.
- Proprietary controls. Instruments placed in the property's chain of title, such as an environmental covenant. The department says the most widely used in Missouri is the environmental covenant under the Missouri Uniform Environmental Covenants Act (sections 260.1000 to 260.1039 of the Revised Statutes), effective January 1, 2008. It says the act does not apply to above ground or underground storage tank sites.
- Governmental controls. The department's examples include the Registry of Abandoned or Uncontrolled Hazardous Waste Sites, the Missouri Water Well Construction Code for wells in areas designated sensitive, a City of St. Louis ordinance that prohibits using groundwater as a drinking water supply within city limits, and a Jasper County ordinance that requires soil testing on Superfund-designated properties for new dwellings or child-occupied facilities and well testing when a property is transferred.
- Informational devices. Non-enforceable documents such as deed notices, public health advisories, long-term stewardship data and tracking systems, and other lists agencies keep. The department names the E-Start map, its Missouri Solid Waste Management Map and its Closed and Long-Term Stewardship Sites page among its own.
Using this in a records review
By the department's own description, a restriction may sit in a recorded covenant, in a local ordinance or in an enforcement document. It is worth checking the title records, the local ordinances and the department's own lists separately, since each kind is kept in a different place. The department calls institutional controls a viable tool when they are durable, enforceable and run with the land, and says durability is a concern because a control may be forgotten or ignored.
Where to look a site up
- The E-Start map.
- The Long-Term Stewardship (LTS) pages.
- The department's publications on environmental covenants (PUB2414) and engineering controls (PUB2886).
Getting the file
The pages read do not give a records route for controls. The department's general route is the Sunshine Law request.
Sources
Missouri Department of Natural Resources pages, read October 8, 2026, no modified date shown: